Corporate Social Responsibility
Does anybody care? Does anybody know?

Consumers Like Social Responsibility--but They Aren't Sure What a Social Enterprise Is

Burgess COMMENTARY
This is a comment I have made about this article (via LinkedIn):

It would have been nice to see some clarification of the distinction between a corporation's 'Social Responsibility' and a 'Social Enterprise'. In my view, they are very different animals and should be analyzed separately.

I very much agree that the general buying public has little understanding or interest in the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or the activities of social enterprise. This comes as no surprise. The mainstream media does very little coverage of the subject, and what gets into the media is rarely more than a superficial mention that attracts viewers, nothing more.

And maybe it is worse. The mainstream media is looking over its shoulders at the advertisers that support them, and do not want to deliver free advertising to entities that potentially compete with their advertisers.

And of course the advertisers only promote the money profit dimension of their economic activities ... they only reference CSR when it helps to promote their marketing agenda.

40 years ago I was an avid reader of Forbes and the other mainstream business weeklies. I rarely pick up these magazines today, in large part because they are a shadow of their former selves, and because they do not seem to 'get it' that the global economy of the 21st century is fundamentally different from that of the 1960s. I would like to see much more from the mainstream business media that tries to address the changes needed in order for the future to be as promising now as the future seemed to be in 1960. I argue that science, technology and the growth of the population of educated youth around the world should be a cause for great optimism ... but instead there is gloom and doom, and no initiatives worth a damn to address the crisis of unemployment of educated youth. The analysis of the banking meltdown in 2007/2008 and the ongoing Eurozone crisis seems to me to ignore the fundamental issue of failure of the whole idea of modern fiat money.

I can go on ... it is time for some serious rethinking about how the economy is analyzed, and from my perspective, it is time to get some meaningful metrics about things that really matter.

Consumers Like Social Responsibility--but They Aren't Sure What a Social Enterprise Is

A sizable and growing number of consumers want to buy socially responsible products and services.

But many don’t know what a social enterprise is.

And a lot don’t have any intention of buying from a socially responsible company.

Those are the mixed bag of results of a just-released poll surveying 1,015 Americans. It found that nearly 30% of consumers plan to increase the amount of goods and/or services they buy from socially responsible companies in the coming year. Eighteen percent said they bought more from such companies in 2012 compared to 2011. Twenty-five percent avoided buying products from an enterprise because they thought it wasn’t socially responsible.

The survey was conducted by Good.Must.Grow., a Nashville-based marketing firm aimed at social enterprises and nonprofits that also uses money from after-tax profits to help nonprofits pay for marketing services they couldn’t otherwise afford.

Consumers decide whether or not a company is socially responsible by reading the product packaging (41%), reading news about the organization (41%), and/or through their own research (38%). Major factors that determine whether or not someone considers a company to be socially responsible include how employees are treated (45%) and the impact on the environment (38%).

Good.Must.Grow. also came up with something called the Conscious Consumer Spending Index, a score calculated by evaluating the importance consumers place on buying from socially responsible companies, plus plans to increase the amount spent on and actions they’ve taken to support such products or services.

At the same time, there doesn’t seem to be much of an understanding of what social enterprise is all about. First, according to Heath Shackleford, Good.Must.Grow.’s founder, only about 35% said they somewhat or fully understand what the term social enterprise “as a business entity” is. Then there’s this: When asked which entity was most effective at making positive change in society, 70% ranked individuals and nonprofits as being very or somewhat effective. That’s way ahead of major corporations (55%)–about the same number as for social enterprises (53%). “If consumers more fully understood the terminology and organization of the social enterprise, that number would be higher,” says Shackleford.

What’s more, many consumers also seemed to be more interested in getting a good deal than making a difference. Fifty-six percent said they would be more likely to purchases a product from a store that offered a “buy one get one free” special compared to one making a donation to a charity on their behalf (20%) or giving away the same product to those in need (16%).

Also, while a lot of consumers said they supported socially responsible products and services, a lot also said they didn’t. About 30% have no plans to buy such products or services. “There is a segment of the country that isn’t doing anything to support socially responsible companies and doesn’t plan to,” says Shackleford. “There’s still a lot of work to be done.”